Friel opts for a night in

Anna Friel sweeps into the library bar at the Covent Garden Hotel with a glass of champagne in her hand. Her long chestnut hair is faux-messy and she looks like Bambi, all eyes and long, skinny, pale legs and a body as small as a fawn.

She is followed by David, her stylist, who is also carrying a glass of champagne plus a range of assorted bags with things like Moschino and Catherine Walker written on them. "Are we late?" says Friel in her Rochdale accent. "We are, aren't we? I'm so sorry." "Anna was having her hair done," says David. "I was having my hair done," says Friel. "Anyone want a glass of champagne?"

Being around Anna Friel is like a non-stop party. She barely sits still. Quite often she jumps up and, apropos of nothing very much, takes her dress off and stands quite happily naked apart from the world's tiniest fleshcoloured G-string, waiting for David to give her something else to wear. An American couple in the otherwise quiet bar are transfixed. "Who is she?" asks the man, alarmed by the sight of Friel, legs akimbo, showing off more than she should, writhing on the floor for the photographer.

"That's Anna Friel," I say. "She's an actress," says David. "Wow," says the man. He then takes a photograph of her with his new mobile telephone.

"Do what you want with it," says Friel smiling. "I really don't mind."
"Wait till my friends see this!" says the man.

That's how Anna Friel has always been. Men, particularly, go doolally over her. They seem to love her brand of sexy, loopy childishness. She drinks. She smokes (well, she did up until seven weeks ago, when she gave up).

She wears tiny little dresses that she looks as if she's about to fall out of. Often she's pictured snogging friends of both sexes. When she's a bit tiddly she goes all droopy and touchy-feely.

She's pretty tactile anyway. She kisses everyone hello. She seems to have no problem with people invading her personal space. In fact, she positively seems to encourage it. "You're very pretty," she says to the make-up artist, draping an arm around her. When she sees that I'm heavily pregnant, she gets down on her knees and kisses the bump. "You must call her Gracie," she says.

When she's not doing that, she likes to show off a bit: acting and singing and mimicking accents. So much so she often loses her train of thought. "What was I saying?" she asks David who, most of the time, isn't really listening. They met years ago. "She was with Robbie [Williams] then," says David. "Bless Robbie," says Friel. "She looked so ... so ..." says David. "Pretty?" says Friel. "Defenceless," says David, handing her a beautiful summer, ruffled, crepe dress. "Put this on Anna, baby, please." She puts it on. It's tiny but it still looks as if it's about to fall off. "What do you think?" she says twirling around and pouting. She looks amazing. "I love her," says David. "I love him," she says. "He's my best friend."

Well, in the fickle world that seems to be television and film, it's good she has such a friend. Although, it has to be said, Friel has always had about a million friends. In the past she became the object of gossip after apparently kissing Kate Moss full-on in the Groucho Club.

The two of them used to be very close. They went to Italy on holiday together. Friel hung out with her and the Natural Nylon set - Sadie and Jude and Jonny Lee Miller et al. But she doesn't see much of them these days. "Don't know why really," she says, popping on a pink jacket that skims her G-string. "I haven't even seen the baby. I'm not in touch with Kate any more." Instead, she now sees Brenda Fricker, who has been her mother in two movies, the current one being Watermelon for ITV.

"I love her," says Friel. "She's the coolest woman. She gives me lots of great acting tips, but I'm not allowed to say what they are." Friel scrunches her hands up to her mouth like a child trying to stop itself from telling a secret. "I so want to tell you but I can't. I promised Brenda."

Dustin Hoffman is also a friend. They met when Friel was in Patrick Marber's play Closer in New York just over three years ago. "I met them all! Stephen Spielberg and Nicole Kidman and Al Pacino and Tom Cruise and ... Madonna!" says Friel, who, with her brother, Mike - the Hovis boy pushing his bike up the hill - would go for dinner with her in Manhattan.

Then, during the nine-month run of the play on Broadway, their
beloved grandfather died so, after the funeral, they brought their "nana" back to New York to hang out with them.

"She's very funny," says Friel. "She kept on calling Madonna 'Redonna'. 'Now then, Redonna,' she said one night, 'what do you do for a living?'"

Anyway, Friel doesn't see so much of Madonna now either but she does see Hoffman. "He's been for tea with my parents," she says. Her parents, Des and Julie, both teachers who still live in Rochdale, don't seem to be fazed by any of this celebrity stuff. "My dad's from Belfast," says Friel. "He's very plain-speaking. He met Ali G the other day. I was like 'Oh God, dad, no,' but off he went into one about the youth of today."

Friel's life is a bizarre combination of homely normality - she is very close to her brother and parents and nana - and celebrity. She says she has her feet on the ground. "My parents would come after me pretty soon if I started talking shit." But she has spent the past 14 years, since she was in Alan Bleasdale's GBH as Michael Palin's daughter when she was 12, in the spotlight.

The media frenzy around her started in earnest when she played Beth Jordache in Brookside, a role which culminated with her having an eight-second lesbian kiss on primetime television. "People still go on about that," she says. "I do a lot of filming in Ireland, which I love, but I always get that 'Ooh, you're Beth Jordache' there. I don't really mind but it was 10 years ago."

Since then, there have been some pretty close shaves in her love life. At one point she almost married "love rat" and lightentertainment "personality" Darren Day. He very publicly dumped her for Coronation Street's Tracy Shaw. Now she's with actor David Thewlis - serious, artistic, considered one of the most talented actors around. They met three years ago at a dinner party and, in their first year together, spent only four nights apart. "I love David," she says. "He's very sexy in Naked, don't you think? That's his best film."

I imagine Thewlis is part of the reason why Friel has calmed down somewhat. I can't imagine an actor of his calibre hanging out at the Groucho Club with Moss and her friends. "We like to stay in and eat curries," says Friel. This is somewhat of a change from her partygirl image. In her pre-Thewlis days she always seemed nervy, edgy and difficult to please. In past interviews, she was so emotionally erratic and needy I feared for her sanity.

She seemed to spend a lot of her time trying to get free clothes from designers. "Well, I was very young then," she says. "And this coat here" - she points to a magnificent black woollen three-quarter length jacket with what looks to be fireworks exploding on the back of it - "was a present from Versace. I've been photographed in it everywhere, so they've got their publicity."

But there were all the stories of her being drunk and lonely in New York. "I was not," she says. "I loved New York. I used to hang out with Rupert Graves and Judi Dench and Natasha Richardson. It took a bit of time but I had this great apartment and I'd look out the window and think 'God, I'm here.'"

But the rumours of a deeper unhappiness refused to go away. Perhaps part of the cause is her fluctuating career. There is no doubt about her ability as an actress. She's done television and film (Land Girls, Mad Cows, Rogue Trader) and theatre, but has not, as yet, broken into the superstar mould in the style of someone like Kate Winslet.

"You know what really annoys me?" she says, "people who keep asking me 'what are you doing back in England?' I went to LA to make a movie a while ago and then everyone assumed I'd failed in Hollywood because I came back. Then, when Closer finished, I came back from New York and everyone started asking the same questions all over again. Why can't people understand that when a job is finished you come home? What was I supposed to do? Stay there for ever and just hang around waiting for someone to offer me some more work. It really pisses me off."

She also gets cross at those who linger on the roles she didn't get - she was a bat's squeak away from landing the role in Gangs of New York that subsequently went to Cameron Diaz. "I'd rather people talked about the roles I have done," she says. The problem is that she seems to be slightly in limbo. "Oh, everyone asks me why I do TV," she says. "I did Fields of Gold when I came back from doing Lulu on stage in Washington and I was criticised for 'selling out', but I was interested in the subject."

In fact, it seems her relationship with the politically astute Thewlis, plus a burgeoning friendship with Trudie Styler and Sting, has led to her becoming a bit of a revolutionary. "Ooh, nothing that serious," she says, "but I'm anti-GM food and I eat organically and that kind of thing." She and Thewlis are against the war. They marched on Saturday, along with friends and family.

"I don't want to become a spokesman about this," she says, "but I feel worried and very ill-informed by the Government." Thewlis is, apparently, a lot more fearful of the results of a war than most. "He says it'll be apocalyptic," she says. "He says it's World War Three. He knows lots of things, David, so it really worries me."

Just then her mobile rings. David, the stylist, picks it up. "It's your David for you!" he says. "My David!" yells Friel. "My lovely David." They chat for a while. "I love you," she says to him at the end.

It's not marriage and children yet though. She'd love to have children, she says, but at 26 she's still too young. And, with Thewlis being 13 years older than her and obviously rather protective, I should think she'd have to get out of her own part-time childlike state first.

Whenever they are photographed, she is nestling into him while he looks proprietorial. But she's a bit broody. "I've had problems with ovarian cysts," she says, "and the doctors say I should have kids before I'm 30, but I don't know."

Her main dilemma is that she still wants to concentrate on her career. "If I have children I know I'll probably wonder why I'm bothering to be an actress. I'll probably want to be with them, not on some boring old set." She has a Hollywood blockbuster, Timelines, coming out this summer, plus a project she is mysteriously just about to sign a contract for. "I don't want to jinx it," she says, "but it's going to be great if it all happens." And she's also got involved with the Haven Trust, a breast-cancer charity, and its fundraising Little Black Dress charity auction. "I bumped into John Rocha in Dublin. He's one of my favourite people. He asked me to model a little black dress for the charity. It's beautiful but a bit too big." She then pops the dress on. It's simple and beautiful. David pins it for her. "Pretty, isn't it?" she says.

After a bit more posturing and posing she says she has to go. David (Thewlis) is waiting for her in their flat in Clerkenwell. "He hasn't ordered the curry yet," she says. "What should I go for?" "Chicken korma?" suggests David (the stylist). We all then hum and ha over what she should wear to a press screening of Watermelon that she is attending the next day.

More clothes are put on and stripped off. We decide on a pink jacket and jeans and high heels. David will, of course, be there in the morning to tweak. Then he's off to Munich and she's off to the Canary Isles with her mother and father on holiday.

"I'm not sure about flying," she says. "I have a house in Windsor. I moved there to be near my godparents. I remember spending holidays with them as a child. It was a magical place for me, so I've moved back there. But today I was stopped three times by the police!"

That's the problem with childhood dreams though, surely. They're always impossible to replicate all those years later. "Oh, do you think so?" she says. "Please don't say that. Please." And, for a fleeting second, with those long bare legs, she looks about six years old.

Then she gathers herself together and, along with David and the bags and some refilled champagne glasses, wanders off into the night.

The Little Black Dress Reception takes place at The Dorchester Hotel tonight. Dresses made by the world's top designers for their favourite celebrities will be auctioned in aid of The Haven Trust, which provides support centres for women with breast cancer (www. thehaventrust.org.uk).

Watermelon is on ITV1 in March.